Clean Energy Investors Want Some Level of Certainty
In my quest to understand investors’ reluctance to assert themselves in the renewable energy space, a common theme continues to emerge: uncertainty. Where no one doubts that demand for oil and coal will continue for some time, and that the government subsidies that support them will remain a part of U.S. law, no similar confidence exists that the world will put a premium on clean (versus dirty) energy.
Quite the contrary. The investment and production tax credits that support wind and solar are as mercurial as women’s hem lines. These incentives may exist one year, only to be forceably removed the next. We have serious presidential candidates who proudly claim that, if elected, they will shut down the Department of Energy and dismantle the Environmental Protection Agency, and many are openly opposed to the entire concept of clean energy – certainly if that requires even an iota of public support.
Given all this, is it any wonder that the formation of investment capital in clean energy is so feeble? Even in the absence of an active antipathy to renewables, as long as there is no level of certainty for the market for alternative energy, investors can be counted to go elsewhere.
So let’s look for a few good ideas that represent potential solutions. Here’s a concept my friend and colleague Steve Hellman, president of Eos Energy Storage, brought up in my meeting with him this morning in his company’s new offices in northern New Jersey:
There is no need for government to pick certain technologies to support; it’s tough to argue that government is wiser than the market in picking winners. Instead, government need only to put a floor on the prices of gasoline and electricity, and then get out of the way and let market forces take over. Steve suggests that the federal government could say, “As of today, there will be a floor of $4 a gallon and $0.15 a kilowatt-hour for electricity. Anything under that, we sweep up as a tax, and apply it against the deficit.” Now, for the first time, investors have a price they can shoot for. They can have confidence that if they can deliver a transportation solution that is more attractive than $4 a gallon gasoline, or an electricity solution that beats $0.15 a kilowatt-hour, they have a position that is guaranteed to be appealing in the marketplace.
That’s a heck of an interesting thought. And it’s revenue-positive; that’s something of a rarity for ideas that support clean energy, isn’t it? I promised him that I’d run this by our readers and ask for comments, so please feel free to let Steve and me know what you think.
In the meanwhile, let’s remember history. For centuries, large, entrenched players have gotten even richer by strategically raising and lowering prices. This was a favorite tool of John D. Rockefeller in the 1920s. When small competitors would start to gain momentum, he’d lower the price of oil, driving them all out of business; when they had all gone belly-up, he’d raise the price to even higher levels, knowing that he’d regained his monopolistic position.
In hindsight, some would regard that kind of market manipulation as unethical, as “dirty pool.” But here the stakes are much higher; the extraction and combustion of fossil fuels no longer threatens just the business aspirations of a few wildcatters, but the health and safety of all seven billion of us here on Earth.
As long as the price of energy can be manipulated to drive the competition out of business, the future of renewables will remain anyone’s guess, as investors will continue to be terrified, and completely unwilling to jump into the game. And on and on we’ll go, until the last ounce of crude is sucked out of the ground, the last lump of coal is burned, and the environment is in ruins.
Putting a floor under the price of energy for fossil fuels is not the way to go. Also, simply raising taxes on fossil fuels would probably be a political impossibility. Instead, a portion of the tax burden should be shifted from the income tax to a tax on fossil fuels. However, the change would have to be phased in over a period of a few years to avoid undo disruptions. It should be done in a way to make it clear that it is not a tax increase, but rather, a change that would have no effect on the overall tax burden. The effect would be to reduce the consumption of fossil fuels.
The price of fossil fuels does not cover the full cost. Our foreign policy is to some degree driven by our dependence on imported oil. Also, the price of fossil fuels does not cover the health and environmental damage that is caused by using them.
How that floor price is chosen could be very important. I agree Gov. has and always will control a part of prices for most things, one way or another. If US stopped all subsidies I think Oil Barons would either make less profit or decline in popularity. Another way could be ban all importation of Oil. Then let the price do what it will and see then who worships the sun. Who wastes gas on large vehicles and un needed trips. then Mass Transit could be viable and Ca. would be correct in a central rail. After a generation or two of mass transit people would not vote for cars because the ROI would be to long…..Status Quo is my point. Status quo now is now we give billions away to foreign peoples who hate us and Oil Companies that are careless greedy and dirty.
We could do everything in USA, We do not need other countries, we hope to profit from them, but it is not working that way anymore. so let us change, for a change…
The Basic Operating Unit of human beings is pleasure and a pain. Seek pleasure, avoid pain. Meanwhile, it is far more tax-efficient to simply repeal all “tax code” taxes and tax, at its source, all “bad-behavior” pursuits: brown power which pollutes, junk-food which is deleterious, guzzler-mobiles and boats which needlessly consume/pollute, etc.
Hence, tax every coal train and incoming tanker-load of oil, plus all centrally distributed electricity at its source (utility plants) — add enough tax to replace all other taxes. Conversely, don’t tax productive behavior (those who save and produce; hence, eliminate all income, corporate and death taxes).
Watch how that shakes out: Humans waste cheap energy, so by taxing it high they’ll waste less and produce more clean-gen forms (residential Solar PV, etc.). To summarize, tax environmentally bad behavior, and that includes that which is bad for the general health. The core dynamic tracks the Basic Operating Unit and helps our environment. We’ve already gone down the road of altering mass behavior through taxation (cigarettes now cost $4.50/pack). That’s the simplest and best answer, and so the above proposal appeals to me, but I find it more efficient to tax “brown” power at its source rather than at myriad end-distribution points. More here: JamesChristopherDesmond.com (click on “Free Market Solar Power”).
I totally disagree with this idea. What could be more damaging to free markets than Govt. putting price controls on free enterprise? This smacks of Fascism!
I often watch this debate with dismay, and as a non-American (but hugely supportive), I can’t help being frustrated by the US having to dance with the enemy. Whatever the solution, the free world looks to America with hope and admiration. Was this not the countrey that had the courage to pool all its resources for common purpose when the smoke had cleared over Pearl Harbour? Is this not the country that leads the world in innovation and technological expertise? Is this not the country that has shown ‘nothing is impossible’?
Or is this not the country?
Reg Wessels
Earth Corporation
This is an interesting concept could you explain it better and give an example of how it would work?
Investors are going to wait to see how wins the next election.
People don’t like it when millions of dollars are wasted or transferred to friends of the present government leaders like in the resent solar energy scam. They also don’t like siltation’s like what happened in Akron Ohio when Ohio Edison paid the city not to generate electricity at their newly build trash burning power plant.
Does any one know any honest investors that won’t buy a technology and put it on the shelf?
Remember Rudolf Diesel he had a 75% efficient Diesel Engine that never got finished and he went missing after boarding a boat in England and never getting off in France?
The most efficient Diesel engines have an efficiency that slightly exceeds 50%. Getting much higher than that is impossible. In the time of Rudolf Diesel, engines and injection systems were crude and came nowhere near 50% efficiency.
Some of what one reads is not correct. At one time, there were rumors that someone had invented a carburetor that would enable a car to exceed 100 mpg but that the oil companies and bought out the inventor and suppressed the invention. Not true.
Clean investors don’t exist; they are all dirty. They will not accept risk unless you can guarantee them the Moon. They are really not much better versed than Las Vegas gamblers. That’s another story.
This is about certainty but rather the Fed Govt having the courage to set a National Energy Policy, An Energy Policy for American Independence.
First we need objectives to agree on. I propose these:
1. Reduce our dependency on foreign oil, by using less
2. Improve World climate concerns through reduction in fossil fuel consumption and dirty coal burning power plants
3. Develop alternative fuel solutions in both transportation and energy sectors.
4. Keep America growing, moving forward and secure
Can everyone agree with these?
We like to believe we are intelligent and naturally do the right things, but we aren’t. We are basically economically driven. Changing costs is what we must do to change our habits.
The Justified Energy Development Initiative (JEDI) fund is a “mandatory contribution” when purchasing gasoline or diesel fuel or coal generated electricity. The JEDI fund is about accelerating energy efficiency and alternative energy technologies and will cause Americans to make “better” decisions about energy.
The JEDI fund will be used to develop alternative energy sources – 35%, support mass transit systems – 15%, improve highways, railroads and electrical infrastructure – 15%, help those caught in this cost shift – 25% going to 0, and redevelop urban areas – 10% going to 35%. We need a major kick in the pocketbook.
The mandatory contribution would be a $1.00/gal and rise $0.50/yr over 8 years. This sets a long term program and everybody can see it. Researchers can get serious, car makers can plan their products and the public can start to plan their lives. It will be a Federal contribution with Secretaries of Energy, Transportation and Interior being responsible to administer.
We consumed 137,970,000,000 gallons of gasoline in 2009 (1.25 gallons per day for every man, woman and child)! Currently the Federal tax is $0.18/gal yielding $26 B in revenues. http://www.eia.doe.gov/energyexplained/index.cfm?page=oil_home#tab2 At $1.50/gal tax, we collect $211B dollars. The American people will accept this, only if they see it going to create energy independence and a better world. I am not a politician, so I can’t “sell” this. Lastly, to keep control (the bureaucrat’s hands off) of the money, we must strictly allocate it with public oversight. The public must see progress.
Talk about this! It is about getting fit and healthy; never easy, but we all know it is right.
The energy problem is not just oil we use in our cars, but also includes electricity generation. There are alternatives to coal generated electricity, but they all cost more or require new investments with questionable returns. To drive Americans to use and demand alternative forms of electricity generation, then we must also change the economics to make alternatives and conservation a priority. I would propose a similar initiative to change the rate structure for electricity produced from dirty coal to make alternative forms more cost effective and desirable. Again the money collected could be fed into new technology and infrastructure to build a sustainable energy market. All of a sudden, people would realize they must conserve because it affects their pocket book.
Insanity is defined as doing the same thing over and over but expecting a different result. Are we really insane in this country?
The funds from the JEDI tax should be spent EXCLUSIVELY on development of solar energy. We need to park our cars and put a tarp over them and not drive them. We live our lives in a “transportation mania”. We’re crazy as a society for allowing our country to be planned around vehicles and not around people.
The long and short-term solution to energy is solar. Read: http://solarfurnacechp.wetpaint.com/page/SOLAR+FURNACE+SUMMARY
We need funding of innovative energy producing systems. Until that occurs on a national scale, we will continue to wallow in our grief of rising prices, dropping standards of living and lost opportunities.
Jim Miller
This is worth reading; it is about the real cost of gasoline.
http://209.200.74.155/doc/Real%20Price%20of%20Gasoline.pdf
It’s from the International Center for Technology Assessment. Click under publications.
The bottomline conclusion is that the real costs is between $5.60 and $15.14 per gallon depending on if you like high or low estimates. This includes tax subsidies of Oil industry, Government program subsidies, protection costs involved in oil shipment and motor vehicle services, environmental, health,and social costs of gas usage, and other externalities together amount to $558.7 Billion to $1.69 Trillion. Read it and weep.
If consumers had to pay directly for externalities, surely there would be a very significant change in how we use energy. Unfortunately, most people have not studied economics and therefore are not completely aware of externalities.
One reason that laissez faire doesn’t work is that it does not take externalities into consideration.
Keep in mind that the cited article was published in 1998 (when pump prices were in the neighborhood of $1.00-$1.50 per gallon) and prices quoted were in 1997 dollars; then imagine what the figures would be today.
I would have argued that a bigger problem than subsidies is that the US grid is operated on principles that are ill-suited to an intermittent source such as wind or solar. For example, Spain runs a centralized national dispatch center that uses wind when it is available, even if that means ordering other types of generation to throttle back. As wind capacity increases, there are a number of problems that wind providers seem reluctant to address. ERCOT, as an example, has been reluctant to count wind power in certain reliability calculations because the wind providers won’t take responsibility for providing some degree of scheduled power (eg, a coal plant is going off line in three weeks for scheduled maintenance; wind providers won’t put up the money to guarantee, by buying from other suppliers if necessary, that they will provide a specific level of output while the maintenance goes on). Wind providers have typically received a very large concession in the form of not having to provide reactive load response and frequency control capabilities.
These uncertainties would seem to be at least as important to a knowledgeable investor as any direct government subsidies. There’s only revenue when I sell electricity; will my wind farm be able to sell all of its output? Will my wind farm be held to the same scheduling standards as other generators for reliability purposes, sometimes requiring me to buy large amounts of power from other suppliers? Will my wind farm be required to meet the same grid protection standards (reactive load, frequency control) as other providers, which may significantly increase capital requirements?
Great point. Please see: http://2greenenergy.com/integrating-renewable-energy/20271/.
It seems to me that the largest externality that no one wants to even mention is the monopolistic ploy that if the USA does not soak up the bulk of world oil, the Chinese will, ergo, support of commerce dominance, and the real reason the US military congressional collusion is moving to war with Iran. China is Iran’s biggest customer.
The other externalities, however obvious, are just as easily ignored, proven by history in that nothing has been done about it so far.
The media seems certainly in the control of big business also, and will join in the manipulation of truth to keep fear in play to control the masses. I hope I am wrong, but everything so far points to it.
Big business does have excessive influence over the media. However, that is nothing new.
At one time, Henry Ford owned a widely-distributed newspaper which he used to promulgate his anti-semitic propaganda. Andrew Carnegie, the steel magnate, also owned newspapers. The tobacco industry used its influence to suppress the harmful effects of smoking. Also, since the Civil War, big business and wealthy people have found ways to manipulate the legislative process. The Koch brothers oppose nuclear power because they have financial interests in coal mines. The fossil fuel industry supports renewables because it understands that by doing so, the transition to advanced nuclear power will be delayed until it is found by expensive experience that renewables will not do the job.
Ways should be found to blunt the excessive influence of big business while still recognizing that it does have a right to make its interests known and understood.
Dear Frank even without subsides re-newable energy is catching up with coal and Gas.
Who is going to invest the Billions to develop advanced nuclear the taxpayer that’s who. Utility customers are already being forced into paying for Nuclear Plants in advance because they are so expensive to build.
Clean Coal and abundant Clean Nuclear Energy are a fairy tale.
Hiding the emissions somewhere is not clean, Where in your back yard should we put the nuclear waste? If your neighbors don’t mind.
Fossil fuel Industry supports renewables for PR mostly and of course to keep an eye on the competition.
They invest less than 0.1% of revenue in re-newables.
Yes right now they have the money and influence yes it’s going to be expensive getting renewables working how many Oil companies went bust drilling a dry well
Anyone aware of how fragile a planet we live on is for renewables except for those benefiting from hydrocarbons.
Roy,
The problem with nuclear power is that we are not using a good nuclear technology. Check out the following link:
http://thoriumremix.com/2011/
There is no shortcut to understanding energy issues; it takes many hours of time and study and a healthy skepticism of many sources of information.
About 99.9 percent of the nuclear waste is the result of using a bad nuclear technology combined with an inappropriate fuel cycle. There are many ways to design nuclear reactors and many possible fuel cycles.
Wind farms, on average, produce about 20% of their rated power because usually the wind is not blowing at the optimal velocity or it is not blowing at all. Just drive around the country and look; you’ll find that many turbines aren’t even turning. Thus, even if interconnecting wind farms over the entire country could be done and if would average out, the capacity would have to be five times the capacity of nuclear or fossil fuel generation to do the job. Solar is not always available either; it is more predictable, but has similar problems to wind.
To determine how closely renewables could come to meeting demand, it would be necessary to instal sensors at most locations where wind and solar installations would be practical and transmit the data, in real time, to a central location for continuous analysis. That way we could determine how reliable our power supply could be if we interconnected various sources. But spite of diligent searching, I cannot find any indication that that has ever been done. Instead, we are being asked to spend billions of dollars without first doing the necessary studying to determine whether renewables would actually do the job.
If you can find a study that actually proves that it would actually, work, I’d like to know about it.
Dear Frank,
Having studied renewable energy and the challenges facing it for hundreds of hours, The same arguments keep coming back like boomerangs.
Back in the 1950’s Nuclear Energy was touted as the bringer of a new clean energy future, however the Plants that were built are mainly for the production of weapons grade plutonium not clean Energy, We have yet to figure out how to clean it up that’s the real expensive experience, ask the Japanese.
Look at the sales of Solar in that country since the earthquake.
Small safe self-contained nuclear reactors are used in satellites NASA and the Russians have built them.
The problem is will people let you put one in your backyard close to were the power is needed.
Technologies to Create a smart grid are a matter of National Security not just efficiency and available right now. Renewables have brought the fragility of the Grid into public view,A smarter more robust and flexible grid is essential for the US.
The problem is not lack of Energy its out there 1,000 of times what we need better ways to harvest it.
We need better ways to store it and distribute it.
Yes it will probably take Billions to research and develop and improve whats available now.
One modern nuclear power station alone costs Billion Dollars to build according to the Utilities in Florida.
I know what I would rather we spent the money on.
Roy Wagner
I also had the idea of a gasoline price floor a few years ago. It wouldn’t be hard to come up with a formula or mechanism for calculating the tax. It would be hard to get the bill through congress. Far from being fascism this is what a democracy is supposed to do – set the context within which capitalism functions. It is only when capitalism works within limits that it works for the Common Good.
I agree 100%.
I also agree 100%
Time to “GROW-UP” Investors are not interested in anything except making more money. I believe the typocal investor has an IQ of about 90, they have money because they inherited it or someone else really made a major misteak and the investor was able to grab the cash. Now they know little and understand our advanced concept not at all. They are looking for proven and guaranteed investments they are assured will be fabiously profitable or at least offer a guarantee to not fail because they know they will never make any money for themselves and dream only of our despiration to allow them to steal our profits for the few dollars they would otherwise wasted on a world cruse.
Solar can be a GUARANTEED investment through utility PPA contracts that last 25-30 years. What investor wouldn’t want income guaranteed by a legal monopoly – a utility? This is precisely why solar is a better deal than coal or natural gas or nuclear – the others have input costs that can’t be guaranteed. Luckily, sunshine is free and virtually all solar farm costs are fixed costs.
Look at the lack of financial support another way. I know of several, and you each have known or heard of many others. Let us consider a bus full of entrepredeural individuals (Perhaps 50 of them) We interview all fifty and with the help of a “Psychic” we determine only one is in any way likely to have business success with their concept.
Actually the ratio of one sucess out of 50 dreams is more than typical. There are few businesses but thousands of dreams. (Admitedly many are in passing.)
I see a different future, I believe we can and will change the status quo, Now the world is aware of whats going on.
Describe the world we live in now to someone a 150 years ago,Before big Oil, Gas and Coal fired power plants.
How long did it take for Oil, Gas and Coal to establish themselves as the Energy industries worldwide.
Actually there still expanding even knowing that the supply is finite.
Other means must be found, renewables are the most logical.
I believe it is Governments job to provide the Legislation to promote this and I understand the Established Industries resisting that especially when reporting record profits year after year.
We need to get Government out of the oil, gas and coal revenue business,
and the Oil, Gas and Coal revenues business out of Government then just maybe things will change faster.
Greg. The idea of the word “certainty” is as abstract as the word: legal. thew word law and the word legal are a worlds apart. Intimidation rules the world or did you know that under color of law? The word green is as taurus fecis as the word truth. Only the fool rushes in to grab what is left of this miasma of actors and know it all pundits who say a lot without saying anything at all. Green, a word for verdie is like the word maybe, could be, might be. we are tained well in this mind-stall gymnastics. So who will step up to the plate and make real , real. So, it is not the word “certainty” that matters but the passion of desire to build a dream from nothing because you can see it. Wonder if Einstein said that any possibility of certainty moved him to that word?
My company is offering something simple and real. Pre-patent and viable to ulitmate green [real accountable numbers] carbon footprints, flow charts and energy consumption ratios but, green is not what is “safe-bet.” Ignorance is always sure of itself in the common weatlth of the staus quo. Stay sure when sure has not opposition. that is about to end. Those who agree the most, think the least. as they say, our cup runnith over in vain glorious outcome so why divest. So often what is sure thing today, no matter how dead it is, underlies all our disposable technologies we, in vanity, call future.
Point blank, out of 100 inquires of a totally new innovations [of which no reply given to this site in particular, has been recipricated] a totally new technology offered and only three percent wanted to know? It is a safe bet, to say the word green is like people saying they want to know the living truth. Its not available to them. the word is hollow and non-discript. Any takers, please? james p beyor….on the word green and certain.
My company is at a similar stage, It seems you have to get it into production yourself somehow before anyone will even look at it.That first Angel investor is the key.
Seed capital oh seed capital were art thou.
No matter how logical simple or affordable it is.
Crowd-sourcing may be a way to raise money if it’s green.
It seems you have to pay someone to present it to investors then possibly they may take your idea more seriously.
Competitions are also a way.
If it’s Green Power try.WWW.Megawattventures.com
Or just green the http://WWW.Unreasonableinstitute.com
Craig,
I don’t often copy from others, but on this occasion I think a recent article by the UK’s David Martin may prove insightful:-
‘Germany once prided itself on being the “photovoltaic world champion”, doling out generous subsidies—totaling more than $130 billion, according to research from Germany’s Ruhr University—to citizens to invest in solar energy. But now the German government is vowing to cut the subsidies sooner than planned and to phase out support over the next five years.
What went wrong?
Subsidising green technology is affordable only if it is done in tiny, tokenistic amounts. Using the government’s generous subsidies, Germans installed 7.5 gigawatts of photo voltaic capacity last year, more than double what the government had deemed “acceptable.” It is estimated that this increase alone will lead to a $260 hike in the average consumer’s annual power bill.
According to Der Spiegel, even members of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s staff are now describing the policy as a massive money pit. Philipp Rösler, Germany’s minister of economics and technology, has called the spiralling solar subsidies a “threat to the economy.”’
And:
‘In the words of the German Association of Physicists, “solar energy cannot replace any additional power plants.” On short, overcast winter days, Germany’s 1.1 million solar-power systems can generate no electricity at all. The country is then forced to import considerable amounts of electricity from nuclear power plants in France and the Czech Republic.
Indeed, despite the massive investment, solar power accounts for only about 0.3 percent of Germany’s total energy. This is one of the key reasons why Germans now pay the second-highest price for electricity in the developed world (exceeded only by Denmark, which aims to be the “world wind-energy champion”). Germans pay three times more than their American counterparts.’
(thank you David Martin)
Craig, There are no easy new technologies. (although Nuclear is the best option, albeit with better technologies).
Bio-fuels may have some role to play, but that would require colossal investment on an unprecedented scale and break-throughs in bio-genetic engineering.
Investment will not be achieved by government interference in world trade, or attempting to re-impose long abandoned “floor price’ controls to commodities. All such idea’s are naive, and the full consequences and ramifications seem to be ignored in a bid to achieve Utopia.
There are many misunderstandings and too much false information in these posts. Similar misinformation is too often also in mainstream media. We need to be careful and look at actual costs NOW to put up any new energy source vs payback. Wind is very predicatable, but is not the same as coal/nuclear (24×7). Solar is also very predicatable (and costs keep dropping quickly), plus it is the only source that can be “distributed.”
The best policy will be to encourage the maximum in renewables but enough of the others to ensure “base” energy until we get better (i.e. lower cost) storage working. Nuclear simply should be ruled out because of the huge risk factors and problem of the waste.
The US can lead the green revolution. There are many things to do, and fairly easy ways to motivate investment. The FIT has proven very simple and easy to control if you do it right. If we want the renewable energy to be job creating, simply require a certain percent of manufacture to be local to allow the incentives. There is a difference with “fair trade” when the markets determine pricing, and “investment” when you are taxing in any way for a product.
“Nuclear simply should be ruled out because of the huge risk factors and problem of the waste.”
The problem of nuclear waste need not exist. We have created the “waste” problem by unwisely committing ourselves to an inappropriate nuclear technology and fuel cycle.
From the efficiency and waste standpoint, it would be difficult to design a nuclear power technology that is worse than the one to which we have unfortunately committed ourselves. Natural uranium is 0.7% U235 and 99.3% U238, yet the reactor type we have chosen to use requires that the uranium be enriched to approximately 3% U235 by using an expensive process to discard most of the U238 as waste, even though there are reactor designs that could operate on natural, un-enriched, uranium. Then, our current reactor designs utilize less than 1% of the available energy in the enriched uranium and the > 99% left, even though it contains usable energy, is discarded as waste. Thus, we are getting less than 0.03% of the energy available in natural uranium; that explains the waste problem. We cannot continue using our current reactor technology and fuel cycle anyway since if we do so, we will run out of uranium much sooner than most people realize. But, if we used a more efficient uranium fuel cycle and reactor type, the waste produced would be a tiny fraction of 1% of the waste we currently generate.
There are uranium reactor designs and fuel cycles that can use natural uranium and extract more than 90% of the energy from it; they would reduce the “waste” to much less than one percent of what we are currently using. Moreover, they could use our current “waste” as fuel.
Better yet, we could phase out the use of uranium as fuel and use thorium instead.
I have previously posted links to a site that explains, in considerable detail, liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR) technology, but so far as I can tell, only one person in this site has ever bothered to learn about LFTR nuclear technology. LFTR technology looks as though it would solve the problems associated with out current inappropriate nuclear technology. Again, here is a link to a site that explains in considerable detail LFTR nuclear technology; you can even order a DVD with the information:
http://thoriumremix.com/2011/
Also, check out the following link about a former member of Greenpiece who now supports nuclear power:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0308/8835.html
People who are unwilling to study the various nuclear technologies possible are not qualified to condemn nuclear power.
That idea would never get by the voting populace – including me.
It’s not government’s place to determine what a minimum price should be, any more than it’s government’s place to determine what the energy mix should be. It’s government’s place to determine that the market is fair, and then back the hell off.
Right now, fossil fuels are unfairly dumping pollutants and emissions into our society which we have to pay for, while various renewable options would not dump those same pollutants into our society. These externalities should be the only consideration by government with regard to whether the fossil fuels, nuclear power, or renewable options are favored.
I prefer subsidies to sin taxes – they’re negative reflections of one another – because the impact of raising the price of energy for 90% of the electricity and >95% of the transportation energy will directly harm the poor and lower middle class while not affecting the wealthy (regressive usage tax)… I’d prefer to have subsidies encouraging cleaner energy while increasing progressive income taxes – keeping the energy prices low while letting the wealthier citizens pay for it.
But the key here is to influence the market in as close of a way as possible to adjust for the externalities of fossil fuels. If we broke down the externalities of coal, for instance, we might find ~$150/MWh in total damage to society – between health, aesthetic destruction, more rapid wear from ash and acid rain, and of course anthropogenic global warming (AWG). We might find that natural gas has only ~$40/MWh in externalities…
Those numbers were just thrown out, I don’t know what an impartial finding might actually equal.
But in the above scenario, it seems logical that an attempt from a power company to shift from coal to wind should be subsidized to the tune of ~$150/MWh… and an attempt to shift from natural gas to solar should be subsidized at ~$40/MWh… and an attempt to shift from coal to natural gas should be subsidized at ~$110/MWh. However, if a coal plant were to put up much better emission controls, reducing its effective externalities damage to $80/MWh, why shouldn’t that be subsidized as well?
The point here is: what is the PURPOSE of government involvement? If the purpose is to try to reduce the damage from the externalities of fossil fuels, then that should be what the response is structured to achieve. If you wanted to help with jobs, you could subsidize every new power generation plant to the tune of ~$8-10/hour of U.S. labor that went into it’s construction – as that’s about what we pay for unemployment benefits.
But this is how we should be thinking… What do we want to accomplish? How much is this worth to our society to accomplish this goal? Let’s allocate those rewards to the market-determined solutions that help accomplish this goal.
Many interesting and specific ideas mentioned. Step back ever so slightly, and I would say its called energy policy. Comprehensive policy is never easy to do correctly and there will always be tuning required over time, but the free market will not, and simply can not, create a semi-optimized path forward.
Once upon a time, when people of vision disagreed with the local instance of the prior vision, they could leave and start afresh in another place. No one can do that anymore. The world got small. Our collective wisdom/stupidity now takes the entire world with it. We had better start espousing well thought visions.